“Warm Bodies” (Spoiler Alert)

Warm Bodies is not a great film, but it is a fun film. It has a cute turn on the traditional zombie movie. In this case, a human, as it were, infects the zombies and they start to turn human again.

The film includes a few theologically suggestive features. To wit, the main zombie character, R, has his human life restored in a baptism toward the end of the film.

So, too, a hint of inverted Adam theology informs the story arc as well. R begins the film passive, inarticulate, and bestial (he cannot remember his name beyond a growl-sounding “Rrrr”). Despite his passivity, he sees Julie at risk, and saves her from death. His relationship with Julie, the need to save her from different threats, and the need to sustain her life, e.g., finding her food, prompts R increasingly to shake off his passivity, up to the point that he has his humanity definitively restored in baptism (while saving Julie once again from death).

This contrasts with Adam, charged by God to guard and nurture the Garden, of which Eve was the epitome. The Genesis text suggests that Adam stood passively by Eve as the Serpent lead her to death (note the with her in Genesis 3.6). In a narrative movement from anticipated activity to realized passivity, Adam loses his soul and becomes bestial (even looking like a beast after the Fall, being robed by God in animal skins, Gn 3.21). In contrast, R moves from an expectation of passivity to realized activity, gaining back his human life.